The fantastical adventures of Colin and Francesca: The Nature Of Loja (Part 1)

On January 3rd, a Saturday, Colin and I took a 9 hour bus ride to Loja where we found a hotel on the plaza with a room for us. We didn’t realize until later, but the ‘hotel’ was also for ‘by the hour’ room rental… in fact, the room next to ours was one of those rooms. We saw and heard some sights! The following morning of January 4th we planned a day trip to Park Nacional Podocarpus. I needed to buy some boots first, so we got up early and bought some snacks and empanadas at the central market, along with a new pair of black boots! Once we left the market we negotiated with a taxi driver to take us there for $10 USD and arrived at the park around 9:00 AM. The taxi drove us past the entrance uphill to the start of the walk (it was necessary – it would have taken 2 hours at least to walk uphill) and just as we got out of the car it started to rain.

This was the first time we’d been to the park, and we decided to go to the west entrance from Loja. We’d later go into the park again from the east entrance from Zamora. The Loja entrance was called the Cajanuma Sector and brought us through loads of birds on a looped walk 1.5 hr. into the cloud forest. We didn’t see any Andean bears (though they live there) or the other big mammals living in the park such as mountain tapir, pudu, jaguar, skunks or opossums… but we did see birds, including hummingbirds, and loads of colorful bromeliads.

Monday morning, on January 5th, Colin and I headed to Loja’s Museo del Banco Central, a small museum which contained a few archeology pieces and displays, but mostly some old religious artwork. It wasn’t too interesting, and more crucially we weren’t allowed to take any pictures (after I tried, the guard annoyingly followed us around everywhere – so the experience wasn’t great.) I did manage to get one photo of an interesting ancient painting I saw:

Next we headed to check out the Music Museum. In this 100 year old building were 65 different instruments and 7000 pieces of sheet music owned by famous artists from Loja, a city known as a “cradle of art and music.” There were loads of artist’s information but the museum was completely in Spanish making it a bit tedious for our translation skills to wade through all of it – but at least it was free to visit!

One of these artists was Daniel Carrasco Armijo, born in Loja in 1912. A young musical prodigy, he composed his first piece of music at age 12 called “First Love.” He wrote many famed pieces, eventually winning the National Prize for Composition promoted by the Navy in 1974. He was also the director of multiple municipal bands. There was a ceremony recently in his honor where the Municipal Symphony Orchestra played various songs written by him including one titled “Patria Mia.”

We left the music museum and took a nice walk through the city, ending up in the Plaza de la Confederacion Santo Domingo. Near the plaza was a nice church we popped into, which had been constructed in 1600. The Banco de Loja had an animated cartoons exhibit going on in the plaza with loads of characters on display. They looked awesome, and it was really funny to see the Spanish translations of some of the titles.

Continuing our walk we went into the Plaza de la Independencia. This plaza was where Loja declared their independence from the Spanish crown in 1820. Here there were some nice little shops and colorful buildings… from a few selected angles it made for some decent photos!

The Museo Arqueologico, also known as the University Technica Museum because it is located on the Campus de la Universidad Téchnica Particular de Loja, was our next stop – and the most interesting, comprehensive museum in all of Loja. All in Spanish, but we were up for the translating.

This museum took us from pre-ceramic Ecuador and the area’s findings, through numerous interesting cultures – Valdivian. It started by showing us arrowheads used to kill cold climate animals such as Andean bears, along with ancient artifacts from the Valdivia culture, Machalilla culture, and the Chorrera culture. The most interesting were rucuyayas or small human-shaped shell figures with large eyes encrusted with another shell or mineral of beauty. These figures served as handheld ‘votives’ or offerings.

One colorful diorama I really liked was a model of the festival of the Virgin of Cisne. The celebration begins with a 3 day long pilgrimage every August from El Cisne to Loja where practitioners follow a wooden Virgin Mary carved in the 1594’s by Diego Robles – a statue which they believe has divine powers.

We headed upstairs in the museum, getting a great view of the surrounding city on the way up. On the second level we found larger statues for decorative and domestic use. Some were from the La Tolita culture, representing dancers and the animal masks they wear during their dances. There were some stamps and whistles on display from the Jama Coaque culture, and at the end of the entire exhibit were some ‘modern’ pottery pieces made in the style of the older cultures, but completed by students of the University.

We finished off the day by paying a visit to a beautiful park called Park Jipiro in Loja which was filled with with small replicas of famous cultural buildings. We loved the numerous birds, squirrels, and other animals living in the park and took time to read the information boards about them and photograph them.

That afternoon I decided to take a side trip on my own to Vilcabamba to pay a visit to the forest and trails around the Lodge Izhcayluma. This lodge was beautiful (and very affordable) and I wish we had more time to have stayed there a couple of nights because they had a pool as well! I bought myself a chocolate chip cookie and then headed off to see the birds in the afternoon sun. I thought I would probably do the lodge’s shorter walk (an easy 20 minutes) but I ended up doing the entire 1.5 hr. long difficult walk. I did see loads of birds and rabbits along the way!